Still Life: A Short Film about Tony Judt

Tony Judt, one of our lead­ing pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als, died ear­li­er this month of ALS, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s Dis­ease. Judt was no stranger to con­tro­ver­sy, and he had his crit­ics. But he lived out his final years in a way that few could feel divid­ed about. He kept writ­ing and pub­lish­ing. The pace picked up instead of slow­ing down. And he stayed in the pub­lic light, when most would have backed away from it. The video above – a short trib­ute to his life – isn’t entire­ly fun to watch. I’ll admit that. But it says some­thing impor­tant about how we live, endure ill­ness, and die with our human­i­ty intact. Need­less to say, this makes the video even­tu­al­ly 100% rel­e­vant to you. Hence why we’re post­ing. Thanks Mike for anoth­er great clip.

PS You can find Tony Judt’s recent writ­ings in The New York Review of Books here. I would also encour­age you to read Tim­o­thy Gar­ton Ash’s intel­lec­tu­al obit of Judt here.